Self-Similarity Matrices

The song I used for the Self-Similarity Matrices is “The Boxer” - Simon and Garfunkel.

In the first graph you can see that they mostly used c03 and c02. However, c01 played evenly throughout the song.

The second graph represents the timbre of the song and the third graph the chroma. You can see a clear structure in timbre. The dark blue squares are repetitions and the light blue squares are also timbres which are largely the same. There are a few yellow lines, that is the only moment in the song that that specific timbre is.

The graph of the pitches is less clear. The boundaries of the different blocks are less visible. However, there is a lot of dark blue, which means that throughout the song there not much difference in pitches. There are a few yellow spots, those are little moments where they used a different pitch.

In both timbre and chroma there is a dark diagonal line. This means that those parts are exactly the same on that moment. This is true because at that moment, the graph compared two of the same music at the same time, so those bits are dark blue, because the timbre and pitches are the same.

Introduction

For my research I am comparing the songs of Simon and Garfunkel with the songs of their solo careers. Simon and Garfunkel were making beautiful songs with their own style. I want to see if it is possible for other artists to recreate that style with their own songs. And I find it interesting to see if Simon and Garfunkel continued with that style in their solo careers or that they chose another style.

At first I would like to research the most popular songs from Simon and Garfunkel. What is that thing that makes the songs more popular than least popular songs? And I would like to know if their solo careers were as popular as when they were a duo and what elements of their styles are the same. Which elements stayed the same and which elements are where did they put their own style in the songs?

A typical song from Simon and Garfunkel is “The sound of Silence”. In this song the message is very clear and the sound is very Simon and Garfunkel, calm with multiple voices. An atypical song is “The only living boy in New York”. This is an atypical song not because of the sound, but because of the lyrics. There is not a big message or beautiful words, there is repetition in the text and there are unanswered questions.

Ggplot

In the ggplot SaGeAG I compared the songs of Simon and Garfunkel with the songs from Art Garfunkel. You can see that most of the dots are in the same area. This means that the songs of Art Garfunkel have approximately the same energy and speechiness. However, you can also see that Simon and Garfunkel had some songs with more energy or more speechiness and Art Garfunkel stayed approximately in the same area. The interesting thing thing about the plot SaGePS is that one dot that has far more speechiness than the other songs. I would like to investigate which song that is. When you look at the rest of the plot, you can see that the songs from both artists are in the same area if you look at energy and speechiness.

Chromagram

Scarborough Fair

Dynamic time warping

Sound of Silence original versus Sound of Silence in Central Park, New York

Self-Similarity Matrices

The Boxer

Conclusion